S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 30

The Three Species War

Now Available: Chumba of the Intelligence Corps Book 2: The Three Species War.


War envelops the galaxy…
Before he was Rick Bailey, before he hunted for the Treasure of the Black Hole, he was Titus Chumba of the Core Empire Intelligence Corps.
When the alien race known as Roaches invades both human and Malvalkian colonies, Lieutenant Titus Chumba is plunged into fighting for the Core Empire. From guerrilla warfare to outright military conquest, Chumba is fighting the bugs to save the Empire. Can he stop the alien invasion and keep the fragile peace between the Core Empire and the Malvalkians from disintegrating into open warfare?
Available in Kindle, KU, and Paperback.
Book one: The Smugglers of Mars, is available here.

I Don't Like the Borg Queen

I know, I'm not supposed to like the Borg Queen. She's a villain. But that's not what I mean. I don't like that there is a Borg Queen. I don't like the concept of a Borg Queen.

I was reminded of the Borg Queen (who first showed up the Star Trek: First Contact) as I was watching Picard (no spoilers). Then I recently watched the "Q-Who" episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That's when the Borg are first introduced. And Data describes their cube-like ship as: "The ship is strangely generalized in design. There's no specific bridge, no command center, there's no engineering section." And a Borg Queen would be in a command center.

Now what they did with the Borg Queen in First Contact was pretty good, I'll agree. As she did to Data, an android, the opposite of what the Borg do to humanoids. That is, she took a robot and added human parts where as the Borg usually take humans and add robot parts. And somehow she managed to be scary and sexy at the same time.

But I still don't like the concept of a Borg Queen. A queen would be a leader. And to me, the Borg are a hive mind without specific leadership. Such as a queen.

How do you feel about the Borg Queen. Or am I just taking Star Trek too seriously? Let me know in the comments below.

Radio Interview

Today at 4:00 PM EDT (1:00 PM PDT) I will be on "Anything Goes" with Bennet Pomerantz. We'll be talking books and writing and other fun things. It's going to be a blast. Tune in and see! Follow this link. The interview will be available at that link after the live show, so if you miss it live, you can still listen.

The Smugglers of Mars

Now Available: Chumba of the Intelligence Corps Book 1: The Smugglers of Mars.

Treachery stalks the red planet...

Before he was Rick Bailey, before he hunted for the Treasure of the Black Hole, he was Titus Chumba of the Core Empire Intelligence Corps.


Sent to Mars to investigate water smuggling, First Lieutenant Chumba finds a criminal conspiracy that spans from the red planet to the asteroid belt. Will Chumba discover the deadly secrets of the smugglers of Mars, learn the identity of the mysterious woman embroiled in the conspiracy, and prevent a cold war with the reptile-like Malvalkians from turning blazing hot?

Available in Kindle, KU, and Paperback.

Damn My Luck

If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all.

Here is the saga of me and technology:

My computer wanted to reboot. So I did. It wouldn't boot up then. I forgot it was still under warranty, so I contacted a local guy to fix it. It took him two weeks. He had to reinstall Windows 10. So then I had to reinstall:

Office 2010iTunesThe PDF reader that came with the computerNorton Anti-virusNorton UtilitiesMalwarebytesAnd set up Outlook 2010 to work with my Exchange service.
Then I had to upload my user files from backup. And set up a bunch of stuff and configure the computer how I like it. For details, see here.

And since the Dell Windows 10 image was out of date, I had to do major updates to my computer, one that took two days because it failed. It got stuck at 90%. Under advice of my son and google, I turned off the computer, waited 30 seconds, and turned it back on. But I had to do that update again the next day. That cost me two days of productivity.

Then my iPhone died. I was using it and it just went to the Apple logo. It looked like it was trying to boot but it wouldn't. I had an iPhone Xs and was planning to update when the new iPhone came out in September (it's now coming out in October). So I bought a used iPhone 7 to get me through. I remember loving my iPhone 7 when I had one. But stepping down, I hate it. Plus, I usually get white iPhones but this one is black and I keep picking it up and expecting the back to be the front since they are both black. Annoying.

Then I broke my glasses. The optical shop fixed them.

Then my computer died again. This time I remembered it was under warranty (three day on-site service). So I called Dell. They (eventually) sent someone to fix it. In the meantime, I broke my glasses again. And I couldn't get them fixed because I had to be home from 8am to 6pm to wait for the Dell subcontractor service tech. And he didn't even bother to show up that first day. That's a whole 'nother story.

Eventually I got a new hard drive and Windows 10 installed. Again, I needed to run numerous updates and reinstall everything. Now I'm sort of holding my breath that nothing else blows up. My car is still under warranty for about 3,500 miles. So if it does blow up, it'll wait until that's expired.

Have you had bad luck like this? Or do you think the gods are against me. Let me know in the comments below.

No College Football in the Pac-12

Normally at this time, I'd be writing about last night's University of Washington Huskies game. They probably would have won considering they were scheduled to play Sacramento State.

But, first the Pac-12 decided no out-of-conference games. Then they redid the entire schedule (I have no idea why). Then finally they said, "Maybe in the spring we can play football." Yeah, maybe.

This year the Huskies have a new coach in Jimmy Lake, the former Defensive Coordinator. He took over when Chris Petersen surprised everyone by stepping down last fall. Lake was a good DC, but I have no idea what he'd be like at a head coach. But I wanted to learn.

But I guess I'll have to wait, perhaps until spring. Perhaps until next fall. I don't know. I just know that I am going to miss college football... a lot.

Flat Earth Questions

For some reason I've been getting a lot of anti-flat earth videos on YouTube lately, ones where the video debunks other videos about flat earth. So I've been thinking about the whole "flat earth" movement (which apparently there is a movement) and questions I'd like to ask. These are all based on things even a flat-earther should admit exist. They say look at the world through your own eyes and other senses. That works for all of these. Except maybe #8.

1) If the earth is flat, what causes day and night?
2) If the earth is flat, what causes the seasons?
3) If the earth is flat, what causes the moon to have phases?
4) If the earth is flat, why can't I see some stars in winter, and others in summer (e.g., Orion).
5) If the earth is flat, what is gravity?
6) If the earth is flat, why can I see with binoculars or a small telescope, moons orbiting Jupiter?
7) If the earth is flat, what causes tides?
8) If the earth is flat, why hasn't anyone found the edge?
9) What causes sunsets and sunrises to be colored.
10) Why is the sky blue?
11) If the moon is "it's own light," why can I (and you) with binoculars or a small telescope see craters and mountains (this works best when the moon isn't full)?

So, if you know a flat-earther, you could pass these questions along for me. Or if you are a flat-earther, please tell me  your answers in the comments below.

Anyone, anyone?

I Don't Want to Retire!

When I quit the corporate world at the end of 2010 (wow, almost ten  years ago), my therapist said "Don't call it retirement, call it a career change." He said that because he knew that I was planning to write, and I hoped to do freelance writing and fiction writing (which I have done and still do since then).

When I didn't have my computer for two weeks, it was almost like being retired. I spent the day mostly watching television and reading. And I hated it. Well, not the reading, but the lack of work just drove me nuts.

I wanted to travel when I had my career change, but then health issues popped up and now I can't travel except where I can drive. Luckily, my grandson is within driving distance.

But retirement would be boring. Absolutely boring. Again, if I could travel, say go to Europe or Asia, that would be different. But because of health problems, I can't.

So I'm going to keep writing for as long as I can. Or at least until I get bored with it, which I haven't so far.

What do you plan to do when you retire. Or will you retire? Let me know in the comments below.

80s Movies

The other day I was thinking about movies and specifically, all the great movies that came out in the 1980s.

For example, just off the top of my head:

1980: The Empire Strike Back and The Gods Must be Crazy*
1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
1982: ET: The Extraterrestrial, Blade Runner, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and The Year of Living Dangerously*
1983: Return of the Jedi
1984: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (I liked it) and Ghostbusters
1985: Back to the Future, Cocoon
1986: Aliens*, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and Top Gun
1987: Robocop* and Lethal Weapon*
1988: Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Die Hard*
1989: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Batman
* I didn't see these movies in the theater, but later on home video (VHS).

I remember spending a lot of the 80s standing in movie lines.

And I remember thinking that this kind of thing would continue. But it didn't. It seemed the 80s were a golden age of movies. And 1982 especially. The 1990s just didn't have all the good movies that the 80s had. There was Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country but then we went into the ST:TNG movies and only First Contact was good. Toy Story came out in 1994 and Toy Story 2 in 1999. But that still doesn't live up to the 80s.

And the 2000s only gave us the Lord of the Rings movies, pretty much. Don't get me wrong, I loved the LOTR movies. But that's all I really remember about the 2000.

Can you think of any movies I'm missing? Were you old enough to enjoy the 1980s? Do you think I'm crazy and other decades had more good movies? Let me know in the comments below.

The Saga of My Computer or Maybe I Should Switch to Mac

So one day (a Friday) I got a notice to reboot my computer (a Dell laptop) to fix a disc problem. This worried me a bit. But I dutifully did it. And then my computer refused to boot. I asked a friend what I should do (he works with computers) and he recommended someone for me to look at it (I forgot that the computer was still under warranty; it's only 18 months old).

The guy worked on it for two full weeks. During which time I watched a lot of TV, mostly nature shows on Disney+ (my son's cat seemed to like them). I thought "is this what it's like to be retired; it sucks." I also had a freelance deadline during those two weeks so I borrowed my wife's computer. Luckily everything I needed was on email.
I finally got my computer back and had to download my backup (which thankfully had been working on Windows 10). Then set up everything as I liked it, turn off all the Windows defaults I don't like, download software including Office.
Then on Sunday after I got the computer back, it wanted to update. So I let it and then it wanted to reboot to continue the update. That reboot literally took all day, then got stuck at 90%. It was a 90% for a couple of hours (I was watching Night Court on TV which I never watched in first run and is really funny). Under advice of my son and Google, I shut off the computer and turned it back on. It seemed to work fine.
Until a few days ago when I asked for another update/reboot. So I did it. And it took about 6 hours. I got zero work done (I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation season one, which isn't that bad if you go in with low expectations). I took the picture above during the last update. It stayed at 0% for quite a while before I gave up and went and watched ST:TNG. 
Then, after that update finally got done sometime in the afternoon, I checked for updates again. And it  had some, one of which required a reboot. So I rebooted and left the computer until morning. And it worked! 
So now I'm hoping for no more problems. People tell me I could get a Mac so I wouldn't have these issues. But I don't want to learn a new OS.
What do you think? Should I buy a Mac next time? Or stick with PC and if so, which brand? I've had good luck with Dell computers but this one is driving me mad. Let me know in the comments below.

(Oh, and my iPhone decided to die Tuesday. I get the replacement today. Fun times.)